Friday, May 22

A Mainstay in Chicago radio for 22 years, Smooth Jazz - WNUA, 95.5 FM is moving aside for "Spanish Hot Contemporary" station called "Mega"

Taken from the Phil Rosenthal in Chicago Tribune:

WNUA, a pioneer 22 years ago with the adult-contemporary format that blended pop instrumentals and jazz influences, is poised to become a Spanish-language station, complementing the music of artists such as Shakira, Enrique Iglesias and Aventura with local on-air personalities, news and traffic in an effort to seize a share of a rapidly growing audience segment.

The flip, set for Friday morning, has been the subject of a guessing game within the industry as other smooth jazz stations around the country dropped the format in recent weeks. But much of the speculation wrongly had WNUA embracing country, oldies or classic rock rather than what is being billed as Spanish hot adult contemporary.

Jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis, a long-time WNUA personality, is supposed to bid fans farewell in Friday's 9 a.m. hour. That will be followed by a brief audio montage recalling the history of the 95.5 frequency in Chicago, from the Moody Bible Institute to WDHF to WMET to WNUA. Then at 9:55 a.m., the plan is to begin playing 5,000 successive songs from the new format over the next two weeks as an introduction before regular Mega 95.5 programming begins. Clear Channel has yet to name the station's personalities.

It may be small solace for loyal WNUA listeners, but its smooth jazz format will remain available online at yoursmoothjazz.com, as well as on smart phones via iheartradio.com and to those with HD Radios at 95.5 HD2.

The problem that ultimately doomed WNUA was not the devotion of its audience, which didn't flag. The problem was Clear Channel's ability to cash in on it.

According to independent industry revenue figures, WNUA's take was off by almost $2 million in 2008 compared with '07, while Spanish-language leaders -- WLEY-FM 107.9 and Univision's WOJO-FM 105.1 -- showed gains.

"The revenue support for WNUA declined significantly in recent years due to the changes in how advertisers evaluate radio stations, and we were faced with a very difficult decision," said Earl Jones, president and market manager of Clear Channel Radio Chicago.

"This is something we really struggled with," said Tony Coles, vice president of programming and operations of its six-station cluster. "We're fans of WNUA. So it was really tough to even have conversations about the end of that radio station. But we looked at all the indicators. We really put a lot of time and energy and research and marketing and everything for that radio station, and the needle wasn't moving -- and then the economy started going south as well."

It will not be an inexpensive switch for Clear Channel, which is hiring about 25 new bilingual employees, including on-air talent, a programmer and a sales staff. But other numbers favor the move.

Hispanics are a fast-growing population group in the United States, passing African-Americans as the nation's largest minority segment in recent years. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, as of mid-2008, the nation's population included almost 47 million Hispanics, or about 15.4 percent of the total, while African-Americans accounted for about 12.8 percent.

Since 2004, when Clear Channel Radio announced an initiative led by Alfredo Alonso, its senior vice president of Hispanic Radio, the company has expanded the programming and availability of Spanish-language programming and formats on stations in 20 markets.

But Coles and Jones stressed this decision originated locally and is about positioning Clear Channel's full portfolio -- which also includes WLIT-FM 93.9, WVAZ-FM 102.7, WGCI-FM 107.5, WKSC-FM 103.5 and WGRB-AM 1390 -- for what the market will look like in five years.

Univision, which owns WOJO-FM, WPPN-FM 106.7, WRTO-AM 1200 and the duo of WVIV-FM 103.1 and WVIX-FM 93.5 here, says on its Web site that Chicago is the nation's No. 5 Hispanic market, with 1.8 million people and $24.2 billion in buying power.

Clear Channel, which says Hispanics make up 28 percent of the city of Chicago's population, thinks it can do more than take a slice out of that segment. It might even be able to increase the size of the pie by appealing to bilingual listeners and courting general-market advertisers as well as those specifically targeting Hispanics. It also benefits from WNUA's signal strength.

"It's our commitment to live and local programming, our commitment to community service," Coles said. "Just the ability that we have to be in the community, be active and use the leverage of our other radios stations. We have Kiss and Lite [WKSC and WLIT] as the No. 1 and No. 2 stations for English-speaking Hispanics, and then you combine that with Mega, it's a really powerful force."